I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!Thanks to God and His miracle of Tylenol PM, I am actually able to include some sentences in this post. 🙂

So, I survived the making of the Southern Living Spice Cake.I survived eating it, too, amazingly, since the ingredient list included

which is not a food friend of mine, as many of you know. What can I say? I love that husband of mine. I would never willingly bake with or consume coconut for another human being.

The citrus filling was super easy– dump and stir. Now that’s my kind of baking.

The icing was less difficult than it sounded, with all the mixing over simmering water and whatnot. But I will say that this was much more easily accomplished with Mary Bullock playing at her Pretty’s house rather than stomping at my feet demanding BUCK BUCK DO IT ALL BY SELF.

So this was the end result:

I wish that I could say that this cake was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and it was delicious, but between you and me, I’d rather have Buddy Pie any day.

It has come to my attention that I may need to apologize to those of you whose delicate sensibilities I may have offended with the reference to my thighs yesterday. [Ahem. Lee.]

Today I thought I’d make it up to you by showing you a few of the recipes that have contributed to the onset of the [from now on] unmentionable thigh issue.

[Ignore the green beans. They were Steamables, and they were eh. Every now and then I just get the feeling that feeding Baby B straight carbs isn’t doing anyone any favors.]

But anyway. The pasta to the right is Bowtie Lasagna. It’s super tasty, and more importantly, super easy. [Plus, if you at the last minute figure out that the box of bowtie pasta in your pantry that you’ve been counting on for dinner is empty, you can move to Plan B, which is regular old spaghetti. This happened to me on my first attempt, so I know.]

Do yourself a favor and click the link. But if you’re having a baby anytime soon, don’t make it for yourself just yet. I’d prefer you to be surprised when I drop this little dish on your doorstep. I’ve already designated it as my new go-to baby meal.

Now for this afternoon’s project…

Because summer’s going to be over soon, and I’ve got a ton of Key Lime juice to use before it’s not festive anymore, I’m going to go ahead and sacrifice more room in my pants for these little ditties. But I’m excluding the almonds, and [obvs!] including the key lime juice. Because I’m daring like that. And I hate juicing limes.

Is that sufficient? Have we made up now? I will never speak of my _ _ _ _ _ _ again. Unless all the sudden they get skinny. Then I will be shouting it to you and taking pictures of my thighs in tiny running shorts and you’ll kind of wonder if I might not be just a little bit strange and full of myself.

See, it all started when I set out to make MB these whole wheat flat bread pizzas for dinner.

I had good intentions, you see?

But the closer it actually gets to dinner/bed time, the less MB cares about doing anything except exactly what she wants to do. Usually this can be temporarily solved by letting her help, so I pulled up a chair for her.

So this is what she did while I sliced and marinated and sprinkled.

Even if she had stopped with brushing her hair with the bottle brush, my Mother of the Year award may have been compromised.

But then she took out a gigantic knife. This was not such an awesome plan.

And that was the end of that. I mean, after some shrieking and grabbing and a barrage of NO, MA’AMs.

Do not attempt to go to the grocery store when:A) Your list is at home, andB) You are starving.

Because this is what you will come home with. Oreo Cakesters? Really, Suz? Oreo Cakesters?

[They were pretty good, though, if you’re wondering.]

Food and I are not friends when I am pregnant, by the way. I need it in order to not spend my entire day in the depths of nausea hell, but I do not want it. If there were some way for me to avoid all food except Snickers Ice Cream bars for the entire 9 months of pregnancy, I would totally do it.

As you might guess, grocery trips are a little difficult for me these days. Which is why this past weekend our pantry, while still somehow ridiculously crowded, contained nothing actually edible. Which may or may not have contributed significantly to my public display of sobbing and wagon pulling on Saturday.

So today I put on my big girl panties and went to the Publix determined to buy one of everything, just to quiet the roaring but incredibly fickle beast that is my baby belly. Lee laughed when I told him my plan, but I don’t think he’ll be laughing when he sees the receipt.

Or when I tell him that in all those groceries, there is still nothing to eat for breakfast. See above “Note to Self” section A.

Also must share:

Mary Bullock unpacked the grocery bag sitting next to her on the way home. When she got to the Ruffles, she hugged them and said, “Awwww.”